The Art and Theater of Beads
Always a bead aficionado, Sandi
Britz made her living over the past 30 years in divergent careers. But
she's been lured back, again and again, to the intriguing variety and
beauty of beads. "When I'm beading, I forget about everything else.
It's something like the "peak experience" some athletes describe,"
she says.
Living in So Cal in the 1970s, she became interested in the highly versatile
seed bead - knowing she was hooked on the endless variety when a friend
asked her to comb the markets for vintage beads to sell back to her. "I
developed a collection that I couldn't part with," she said. "I
never sold them to her." Instead Britz let her imagination soar.
Sandi keeps up on the hot colors and styles - designing, creating and
selling beaded jewelry to compliment current trends. Aided by a natural
artistic eye and design sense that keenly recognizes color shape and spatial
relationships in almost everything, she became one of the first small
independent bead jewelry designers to sell to department stores such as
Sax and Nordstrom's.
"I'm not a purist when it comes to combining beads in my designs,"
says Britz. What's important to her artistic eye is the relationship of
one bead to another as well as the relationships of color, texture and
shape between the strands. "I'll use gem stones, crystal, sterling,
shell and glass seed beads in one necklace and I love incorporating myriad
shapes in a piece." Using a wide variety of bead values in combination
with gem stones helps keep her jewelry affordable, she says.
While her shop is full of glistening display cases with exquisite examples
of bead artistry in materials from around the world, Britz says, "It's
not a museum. I want my work to be enjoyed by women of all income levels."
Britz provides bead enthusiasts with a fabulous variety of beads and supplies
for making their own jewelry. "It's all about materials and methods,"
she says. "Given some guidance most women can create wonderful jewelry,
even if they don't feel artistically inclined," she says.
Her shop is a comfortable and inviting place. "It's a little like
theater," Britz says. "When the door opens, my customers walk
on stage and anything can happen."
Excerpt from a September 2006
story in the Source Weekly - by Caryn May